Huckabee says GOP focus needs to be on governing rather than arguing

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee — the winner of the 2008 Iowa Republican Party Caucuses — says science and technology are helping to change attitudes about abortion. Huckabee is in Des Moines tonight to speak at a fundraiser for “Informed Choice of Iowa” which operates clinics in Ames and Iowa City.

“When my kids, my daughter and my daughter-in-law, would go to the doctor and see their babies at 12 weeks they didn’t say, ‘Oh, I have this little wad of tissue inside me,'” Huckabee said during an interview with Radio Iowa. “When they were hearing the heartbeat, you know they would send me emails and send me pictures. There was never any question about, you know: When is that going to be a baby? When is that going to be a human?”

Huckabee, who spoke with Radio Iowa before the event, said he does not miss the negativity of the presidential campaign trail.

“But I do miss the opportunity to go out and to talk to people and try to share with them that there really are some solutions to some of the problems that we face in the country — and they’re practical,” Huckabee said. “They’re not political. They’re practical and I do think that’s missing a lot today.”

Huckabee laughed at the idea of being the Republican nominee to face off against Hillary Clinton in 2016, but he didn’t rule out another bid for the GOP’s presidential nomination.

“We’ve got to get back, as a Republican Party, to where our focus is on the art of governing, not just the art of arguing,” Huckabee said.

And Huckabee said Republicans have to decide there’s not that much difference among Republicans compared to the differences Republicans have with Democrats.

“Within the Republican Party, there may be degrees of passion over issues, but it’s not degrees of principle,” Huckabee said. “I find it just stunningly insane that Republicans would fight each other over things that are a hair’s difference. It just makes no sense to me and I think we need to quit spending millions of dollars shredding other Republicans.”

According to Huckabee, that effort would be better directed at “going after the policies” of Democrats, especially President Obama’s “outright lies” about his health care law. Huckabee said the president lacks the authority to order reinstatement of the health insurance policies that have been cancelled because they don’t meet minimum “ObamaCare” standards.

Because of the extraordinary political pressure that is on every Democrat up for reelection, (Obama) trots out and tried to say, ‘Well we’re going to tell those insurance companies they’ve got to have those policies.’ No they don’t,” Huckabee said. “That would be like ordering McDonalds that they have to put the McRib on the menu permanently. The president doesn’t get to do that.”

Huckabee said it’s both “comical” and “revolting” that Democrats are now calling for changes in ObamaCare after saying for months that the it was the law of the land and could not be changed.